[rainmaker]

Originally Posted by texaspaul

I was born and raised in Vidor,Texas. Whatever you may have heard, it's not how everyone in the town is. Google it if you don't understand. I have never considered myself a person who cares about the color of your skin, hair or shoes. I never thought about how some words can get twisted, until about the year 2000. Just before stepping into the jump circle for a Toss, I verbally and visibally, signaled direction for each team. As I did it, I realized that one team was all black players, wearing black. The other team was all white players, wearing white. I remember after I said it, "Black this way, White this way." I felt like someone had a voodoo doll of me and they were stabbing me in the back.

I now use the term Team black or Team white. At first it was weird, but after forcing myself to do it, I never think about it. It just comes out.

Time outs are reported to the table as " Coach, Team black, 30 second

When giving jump circle instructions, I refer to Team White or Team Red.

When the game is in play, I do not refer to fouls or OOB's as Team . I simply say "Red 32" on fouls. I simply say "RED" on OOB's.

Maybe it's just me, but I didn't like reporting to the scorer, "Black, Coach 30 second TO."

By no means do I ever want to have someone distort what my true meaning is. The games not about me. I want to be seldom seen.

I had a game one time where the all-African-American team was wearing white jerseys, and the all-Caucasian team was wearing black jerseys. As for you, at the beginning of the game, I noticed as I was calling "black, this way, etc" A couple of the kids noticed too, and laughed. Then some of the others laughed. I raised my voice a little to include the coaches, and said, "I don't care what color your skins are, I'm calling this game by the jerseys." Everything went fine!